


Between the Two of Us (oh, my love)

by lonerofthepack



Series: What the Water Gave Me 'verse [6]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Chemical Pneumonia, Delayed Drowning, M/M, Whumptober 2020, implied drowning accident, oxygen, sick!newt, this is practically fluff, worried!percival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:07:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27209365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack
Summary: 2020 Whumptober prompt: Breathe In Breathe Out: Delayed Drowning | Chemical Pneumonia | Oxygen“You’re warm, too,” Percival murmured, pressing a hand to his forehead, while Newt focused on drawing breath through a throat that felt like fire and leaden lungs. “How much water did you say you swallowed?”“Don’t tease me,” Newt said, and then coughed ferociously for a while longer, hating how every heave of his shoulders made the worry lines in Percival’s face seem to carve a shade deeper.Set after What the Water Gave Me (I Took and Gladly)
Relationships: Original Percival Graves/Newt Scamander
Series: What the Water Gave Me 'verse [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948162
Comments: 4
Kudos: 52
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Between the Two of Us (oh, my love)

**Author's Note:**

> Well, midterms suck. I wasn't expecting them to suck quite that bad, but that's life. So, on a slight delay but going strong. Thank you for your patience.

“You’re warm, too,” Percival murmured, pressing a hand to his forehead, while Newt focused on drawing breath through a throat that felt like fire and leaden lungs. “How much water did you say you swallowed?”

“Don’t tease me,” Newt said, and then coughed ferociously for a while longer, hating how every heave of his shoulders made the worry lines in Percival’s face seem to carve a shade deeper. “I can— I can swim just fine, when. When."

"Sweetheart," Percival said, and Newt almost flinched away from his tone of voice, so achingly tender when he felt so foolish, and made himself give in to what he  _ wanted _ to do, which was to lean into the cool of his fiancé’s hand instead, with a plaintive little noise that protested any attention whatsoever paid to his silliness. What a mess.

"I know you can swim," Percival continued in that tone of great and terrible gentleness. The one that Newt loved and hated, in ever-changing unequal measure. “And I'll be having words with Kerk, because the brat knows better than to dump people unexpectedly in water as cold as what’s here. But I think first we’re going to call a Healer, because I don’t like that cough at all, and water in the lungs is dangerous, my love.”

“I don’t— I don’t want to impose— Your. Wanted. Ff—”

He couldn’t breathe. Or he could, enough to cough, to gasp and heave and cough some more, and Merlin, he felt like he can taste the cold salt water still, choking him, but he couldn’t—

He saw Percy move in snatches— to the door, to toss it open and call something down the hall; felt glances of him— stroking hands down his upper arms, snugging close to his side to give him something to rest against, winding arms around his shoulders to ease the violence of the seizing coughs. 

Time wasn’t something he could understand, not when every second was a heave of tired muscles trying to expel — well, water, he supposed, sitting heavy in his lungs. It felt like hours since he’d started coughing, though it couldn’t be more than one, it had started after the first sip of tea, and it was dark now out the windows but he’d been in and out of the water only just that afternoon— not some indefinable nonsense period like months ago, even if that’s what it felt.

“Per— p—” Something about the percussive feeling of Percival’s name sparked the coughing, every attempt garnering fewer letters, trading them for the wracking, labored heaves. And he didn’t want to panic, knew better somewhere in the back of his head, what was happening, tissues swelling and water irritating the living machinery of his respiratory system, but he couldn’t say Percival’s name, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t— 

The Healer was tiny, and ancient, a long grey braid and sharp black eyes, her sealskin unhidden and draped warmly about her shoulders.

She made him sit straight, to listen to his chest, poking and prodding--made Percival hold him there, when he couldn’t, when all he could do was curl around the open wound that coughing made of him, throat shredded and ribs aching brokenly. 

She did something with her magic that felt like being set on fire, the fluids inside him simmering up to a boil; he was permitted to lay down, and she pounded on his back with a strength that was at once shocking in one so ancient and agonizing, the blows bruising and his muscles gone tender with exertion and fever-- though he spat a mouthful of proper water out at the end of it, so perhaps it was worth it, to be walloped.

He was repositioned twice, to be tenderized a bit more, and coughed for what must have been hours now, even by his twisting understanding of time. Simmering in magic and fever, bruised under those shocking blows, his mouth tasting of blood and bile and salt water— he keeled over into Percival’s arms well before it was over. He could barely hold his eyes open when it  _ was _ over, when Percival murmured promises to him: it’s all done, they’ve finished, he’s going to be fine.

He remembered, like soap bubbles surfacing, with soft fascination and a gentle pop, that gender was a complicated thing to the Finfolk, and that he’d best — if he could ever speak again, if he didn’t simply dissolve away into the coughing — remember to be respectful of it.

It was a comforting thought to have, tucked against Percival, breathing shallowly in fear of his own lungs. Almost as comforting as the fingers in his hair, the body-warmth pressed near. He rarely fell ill, even as a child he’d been quite hardy, and it was strange to crave company while feeling so poorly, but a fantastic comfort, not to have been left to struggle with it by himself. 

Newt wasn’t allowed to sleep--not yet; the Elder’s voice was a whip-crack that kept him conscious, long enough to be scooped up into Percival’s lap, to drink warm tea that tasted a bit like willow bark but more like swamp water and take deep gasping breaths from a mask of glass and magic, full of air that tasted like mountains if the mountains could be at once brilliantly fresh and as flat as a dusty rug. 

The coughing eased— for a short while, anyway. He didn’t exactly know how he could stand to ever cough again, but that was hardly a choice he’d be offered. The fever was higher or the toll of the cough had been enormous, and ‘both’ seemed the most correct because he was exhausted, and hazy with it. Understanding the words floating over his head was no easy feat, and only in part because some of it wasn’t in English at all.

“He’s already into the pneumonia, lad — that’s the fever, and he’s fighting it well. But we’ve got the water pulled out, and the first dose of potion in him, and that’s all to the good. You did right, calling me to come— it went nasty quick, as land drowning does. You’ll keep him warm and drinking, and when he starts coughing again, you’ll do as I did. Don’t be too gentle with him, it won’t help clear his chest.”

He might have whimpered into Percival’s neck. Maybe. The rumbling of a comforting hum and a hand rising to knead at his nape supported the likelihood, but Percival was intuitive that way, he might have made no sound at all.

“Exactly that,” the Elder agreed, and patted his hand with sympathy. “One more thing to drink, child, then you can sleep. It will help; keeps you from getting too sore.”

He stirred, enough to help lift the little bottle, and gulped down a cool liquid that burned like Fiendfyre down his throat and dragged a reflexive cough out of him, with its own gout of green flames that distracted him from the aching soreness. The Healer chuckled a bit at his expression, and pressed a tin of salve into Percival’s hand. “This on his chest, lad, and a basin of steam every few hours. The clapping when the cough gets bad; the potion morning and evening. He sleeps propped up, check him regularly so his lungs don’t fill. As much as he can drink and then more when he stops being thirsty. And you, creature-keeper:  _ rest _ . None of the nonsense I’ve heard about; you’ll let your betrothed mind your beasts and let your body heal. Clear?”

“Yes, Healer,” Newt rasped, and let the fire-draught drag him down into a soft unconsciousness.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much!


End file.
